Commonwealth Days
by daftheed
Summary: A written account of life in the Commonwealth, written by a man from the past. Happily or unhappily, sick or well, stricken by poverty and jaundiced by where he came from, this is his life, what he did and what he thought, stalking the wastes, Piper by his side. Lets hope nothing is lost on them.
1. Entry 1

Last night. Body in the room. She was an opponent, seemingly. As I lie on the matress it is about 7 o clock, the sun is streaming through the window. There are bodies downstairs too. They are looking unseemly.

I have never really written before. It isn't something I've particularly needed before, either recreational or as an outlet. Writing, to me, always seemed inferior to speaking. I can recall even hating the writing of cards and letters. But that world is out of view. Even the pedantic, the superfluous things, the things you don't give a moment's thought, now are gone.

The past for me is another nation, another planet, in fact. I don't feel drawn to it quite. I have a need to think of the future. Considering how it was I came to live in this year, 2287, that may seem strange.

It strikes me that I don't know who this is for. When you are uncertain of even being alive tomorrow, why bother? A million different people wrote a million different diaries before 'the war' as everyone now must call it. How many are still surviving? How many have been found and read? How many were appreciated? The number gets successively smaller for each of those propositions. And those people may have lived under the nuclear threat, but one can only spend so long paralysed in terror. And of course, the human is more than likely to be wishful in thought and a diary must be a place for those thoughts to live in. This is a thought I have entertained more and more recently.

I spent some of my past years in the army. I remember little of it, but a few details stand out: The routine. The day to day, it was rigid, and I can remember being amazed at its tedium. Another is the fighting. When you are in a gunfight, you are thinking about very little in real thought. Your body and mind instead take on a strange symbiosis. And it is very much chaotic and unpleasant. You spend every moment of actual conflict wishing it would end, so you could return to safety. But in safety, your view changes and again you feel the passive stickiness of tedium.

I suppose, if I take account of what it is I do now, dodging bands of raiders, mutants and grafters, all intent on dealing death without difference, I must be better off for having been a soldier. I still have my fatigues, which I wear for their ease of access. They are made with the need for magazines, guns and parts etc anyway. But I do not miss it, nor do I relish the reminders I get of it today.

War brutalises people and mashes them into new types. They start thinking in terms of survival and selfishness becomes a mandatory thought. Not all succumb to violence or the wreaking of havoc, but enough people do that one is forced to be on their guard, and to distrust even their friends.

In that sense, I am unsurprised by the war and horror and death found in the Commonwealth, a place name so ludicrous that its only relevance is in its shortcomings. It's a name that highlights not the worst, but the pointless. The wish, but lack, of respectability and harmony and common good. The tatty clothes and unblinking eyes, the knowledge, which I haven't quite faced yet, that life is likely to be shorter. The belief that things will get better while realising they haven't. Somewhere above nihilism, but beneath true hopefulness. And yet, titles like that must be bandied about as the way things are. The word 'Commonwealth' both in actual and assumed terms, is a word that does not even suggest the world it is emblazoned above.

Besides the general anarchism expressed by the aforementioned gun wielding types, I am surprised among settlers, of how insular things are. I could write a note from Anchorage as an enlisted man and have a reply by second subsequent afternoon. Yet here, there is no postal service. Nor is there any press (with one exception, which I will write of later.) There are also no hospitals, no real running factories, or stores. There are vendors and salesman and individual doctors. Institutions have been reduced to individuals. People don't go 'out' or try to explore the world. Outside of those who are too ill or vulnerable to travel, there seems to be an incessant and puzzling lack of curiosity by most settled people to go anywhere, even for short times.

Of course, there are the mutants, but also the little things, like mole rats. But if I can survive and live essentially among them, being a strange sort of newborn adult in this austere and rickety world, why don't the locals see more of it?

Perhaps I am simply too limited in outlook. I have only lived in this age some few months, but in it I have seen much. I spent my first few days with Codsworth. Then after encountering the militiamen I went south. I took many stops on the way and got into more than a few fights, but nothing that had me out for good.

It may be hypocritical of me to criticise the settled because I don't remember feeling anything like ease or newness or promise until I found Diamond City and, the intellectual jewel in its crown, Piper.

I was happy to find there were people with lives here. Conversations could be had and though people were interested in selling something, they had homes of sorts and a 'place' to call their own.

But I was struck by some things that blighted the picture my mind had commissioned of the place. The most interesting is the revulsion of 'synths'. In the army and indeed in certain commercial settings, I remember seeing robobrains and securitrons. They were machines that could think, yes, but only in the direct. You could not really 'talk' to it, but it had commands and instructions that you could say with reasonable flexibility. I did not know, and perhaps was not supposed to know, about 'synths'. People, when they can be induced to mention them, say they were a new phenomenon. Synths did not apparently exist in a real way in the pre-war era (a phrase I use with great reluctance).

They have been so made as to resemble, mimic and indeed live as normal humans. While I think there are some minor telling ways to discriminate a synth from a natural born person, I cant say what it would be. People go out of their way to malign, distrust and, if they think they can, expose synths. While the prevailing feeling for them is one of fear, I think there is another, more latent effect their existence poses.

There are people in every place with a large-ish population who say in some way that they are 'real people' who 'want to get rid of all synths' and whose views border on the paranoid. To me this is no good sign. Its that odd, in brackets way people speak about them. That woman in Diamond City who sells scrap, I think of her when I think of synths. Not in how she might be one (but of course, who is to claim she is not?) but in how she thinks of them. It sounds, in its tone and pace, in its lack of grace and overarching formality, like the kind of racism towards the Chinese I can remember hearing and reading in the army, but also in my civilian life.

The 'Institute', an organisation that apparently creates synths, something I guess can be believed without much risk, is what I believe the people truly fear. They exercise a great deal of latent power and seem, in their just being, to only care about itself and its 'research'. I'm prepared to say very little about the Institute. They are talked of and spoken about like some modern, real continuation of Orwells 'Ministry of Love'.

It is true that people must hate as well as fear them, but it comes out as a hatred for synths who, by walking and talking as they do, are at least in some way real and accessible, which The Institute most certainly isn't.

Though I still know frightfully little about them, or their construction, I am very untrustworthy of this cult of hatred. I cannot, in my deepest feelings, feel the paranoia, the insular choking grasp of their very existence. All I feel is curiosity and interest. And though as far as I know I've never met or conversed with a synth, I am inclined to defend them, or at least, refuse them my condemnation, in part because I think there is someone or something that benefits from this xenophobia. And I do not like the way some communities and people I meet look at me when you mention any scepticism of the idea. You suddenly seem small and yet dangerous to them, even through the patrolman's sunglasses I've taken to wearing.

I know this must seem prolonged, and isn't generally what one starts a diary with. But I wish to avoid the tedium of diary entries as I've come to understand them. This will probably not turn out as a day to day, minute to minute recounting of every single thing I did. No, it is more likely going to be an account of things as I see them, with reference to events as they come and a set of principles I generally stick by.

It was Pipers influence that made me consider it. She is always noting down something or other, but only when I am speaking to someone, or busy with crafting things. She says she does not write of me and wouldn't anyway unless I gave her permission, something I respect.

I asked her how she would feel about me writing and mentioning her. She said whatever helps me get through the day, as long as I promise never to tell her what it is I write. A powerful thing for a journalist to say, as by their nature, Pipers too, they are usually curious and extrospective.

Though I've been promised companionship by others in my travels, I am perfectly happy with Piper. She is more than able to defend herself (with perhaps one or two close calls she might have avoided) and I like her mind and how she thinks about things. She is generally quiet and understands I am as well and will go out of her way to help, usually helping me carry the mass of objects I collect. She is very inquisitive when she does speak, and expresses interest in how I feel about things. I am honestly happy she doesn't ask much about my past life, as I call it. She will joke about it, though.

I wrote these thoughts down and set them out with a mind for sleep. Piper is currently snoozing on the chair in front of me. She looks quite beautiful and the sun is on her back. Sleep of any sort is not easily got, as you always have in mind the knife at your back, the loaded gun you fear may be loaded for you. There is no real remedy or cure besides common sense actions like sleeping indoors, preferably with a barricade or a locked door. I wish I could just leave her there to rest a little more, but I can't. Time to get up and get on with it. I have things to do in Goodneighbor and no doubt some other event or quest will take the time to come to my attention. If I get a moment, I really should look east.

So here starts the diary, with all the trappings and limitations a risky, wayfaring life brings. The gun wielding, the life taking, the bartering and constant fear of radiation sickness, rotten food and scarce water to drink.

From the world of carnage and of anarchy and fear, to the future I say: Hello.


	2. Entry 2

Anyone who romanticises the wasteland has spent very little time in it. Piper and I went east. I wanted to head along the coast, where it's possible. There doesn't seem to be any way to cross the water besides swimming, a fact which I was surprised to find surprising. There it is. 210 years. And no one seems to have thought about boats.

In Goodneighbor, I made the acquaintance of Kent Connolly, a slightly idealist but nice Ghoul. After some talking I agreed to get him the Silver Shroud costume. I myself once loved the show. Cant hear it now though. Too many memories.

Piper scolded me for humouring him and eventually I agreed. I admit it was partly so her solid eyes would not be following me with contempt.

Nonetheless, I retrieved the costume, we agreed I should take up the mantle (The costume looks very cool) and I went around, clobbering drug pushers. This I did for no charge as, I must admit, I was beginning to have fun. It was when I finished the latest target that I started the diary. So I have done much since then. Anyways, where we are now is at a hospital.

Specifically, we came across a medical centre. It was very decrepit and besides one or two raiders, the lower levels were easy to move in. Piper, I recall, was speaking of her father.

Then suddenly an assaultron, yet another type of war machine, attacked us. It was a tough machine and I found only the minigun would do. Though we are always ready for it, the end of each fight always leaves us a little less sure of ourselves. Piper caught her breath and we shared a look of mutual tiredness. It was getting too late to fight. But she assented when I suggested we keep going.

It is hard not to become complacent. Every single day, more death, more screaming and blood. It makes me deeply uncomfortable, and I feel like a pin balancing on string. Piper is with me in this. It is tiring to fight but somehow there's another fight of the mind. The resistance to enjoying or expecting violence. I cannot pretend there isn't certain calmness I feel when I shoot a mutant in the head.

We moved through the hospital carefully after that, and eventually found the elevator. The ride was long and filled with quiet. The top floor, oddly, had Brotherhood of steel soldiers in it. They too, we killed. It is hard to feel pity or mercy for a people so hostile to others and so chauvinistic in their views on owning technology.

The roof had in it a vertibird with a skeleton hanging out the cockpit. Then I realised why they were here. The image was quite startling to me. How long had it hung there? I tried to picture, without success, what it must have been like to suddenly see everything fail. The engine shutting down, the controls unresponsive. Pointless death.

All this was positively grimacing. But then I saw another figure a few rooms away. It was someone in an MRI machine. A complete skeleton. I don't even want to think about what specifically did them in. But I stopped and just stared at it. An Anathematic image. What a horrible dissonance that this person would die in a place specifically built to keep you alive. It was an awful tomb. The metal coffin. What if it was the vertibird that did it, and cut the lights while she was inside...

There is nothing romantic or lovely about this. If the price of insularity is that people don't see this, then I am both pleased and displeased. Long ago this building should have been torn down and rebuilt. Long ago the bodies should have been decently buried. But no. They have lain here needlessly. No love, no memory. All of them strangers to the living, the walking dead, the mutants, even to me. Their names are lost to history. We will never see their life in the individual. They are forced by their date of death to be part of a collective whole.

I don't feel like I am part of them. I missed the bombs, just barely. I feel like a stranger here among them. They are the dead. It is the first time in my life I have felt left out simply by being alive. The pathos of it all. It did not feel so powerful until I saw that person in the MRI. There was something faintly obscene about it. Perhaps for some people, ignorance of these things is desirable. People want to stick their head in the mud and still have all the benefits of a society with its head in the clouds.

I am glad I was so struck by it, as I would be uneasy if I too easily gave in to the instinctual, hateful, violence one is forced to adopt in the wastes. I feel it in my bones. On the one hand I want nothing more than to see society rebuilt, with a government in place and some actual economy. Where people are free and secure in their desires, and can live life not having to learn how to fire a gun if they don't want to. But I have moments where I want nothing more than to beat a raider to death and watch their guts spill onto concrete. The thrill of death and the triumph over the fallen foe. I feel it. Not completely. But it is there.

This is what the wastelands do to you. And its why those who don't dwell in the wastes always seem ignorant or arrogant about it as a subject. I have a desire with such people to take them around the wastes. Forget the raiders, the million things trying to kill you. An armed, trained force of individuals could kill all those things inside a year if the effort was solidly made. Look how far I've come.

If enough people see it, maybe it would change. Raiders are no surprise to me. They are hyperactive in their violence. But it can't keep going. Eventually they will be overtaken by the settled and, though I dislike the word, the 'civilised'. But the people themselves have to change. The only peaceful people are those in towns. The baton wielding guards, watching them while they sleep. Of course people are stuck in a loop where they can't know where the next bullet is coming from. So they will arm themselves and sometimes, people will die. The Synths just add another level of fear to it, and is a symptom of the general problem. What is needed is great deal of movement very quickly. And if possible some alliance from the settlements from the north, who I really should get round to revisiting.

But these are big ideas. And I have to think of the micro every day. Life spent just surviving is a poor replacement for life spent living.

When I without realising left the hospital, I said nothing about going back. Eventually Piper and I rested under a bridge somewhere. I said nothing at all. I'm now about to head off again. I am now 'The silver shroud'. A little alter ego-ing is fun I suppose. The outfit has a certain silhouette I like. If it makes people avoid me, all the better. I don't care much for the character but Kent cares deeply about it, and I AM doing moral good, in a violent way.

We are low on supplies, so today will be spent back on Diamond City. Back to the lights, the walls and the safety. The sterile homogeny, the synth hate.

But for now, beneath the bridge, Piper seated and me on my back and i feel like sleeping again.


	3. Entry 3

We moved on, taking with us grief for friend. Kent Connolly died. Right in front of me and Piper.

His death was sad partly because of the effort it took to reach him. For one thing, the building was flanked by ghouls and mutants, thought the latter we snuck by. After trial and error smashing of the sledgehammer we reached Sinjin. He was as brutish as I thought. It was honestly difficult to feel hatred for someone who makes so little effort to be personal in their crimes. He is that most boring murderer, the one who does it for fun.

His death was accomplished easily. Once my leg flicked behind his, the sledgehammer crushed his head like some obtuse size of grape. His cronies spread away. Even I have to admit to being amused at seeing adults run away in fear. It's so ludicrous and also vaguely disappointing. But then there was Kent, shot like some old animal. The way he twitched in his last moment...i think it will haunt me for some time to come. If I had acted sooner it would have made little difference. I had no weapon powerful enough to kill that fuck Sinjin outright. At least I got to watch his head paint the floor that crimson colour.

Piper agreed about taking him back to Goodneighbor and we took turns carrying him (he was light, so that helped.) But we stopped at Diamond City as we had things to do urgently. The trip was remarkably bereft of anything wishing to kill us. I even had a moment to appreciate the stars at night. First time they had seemed so clear in a while.

When I arrived I finally got round to visiting the neglected quarters of Detective Valentine, to discover he was missing. Thankfully his whereabouts were last reported at a station not far from goodneighbor, near that lake area that I swear something lives in. So after departing from junk and picking up the latest edition of Publick Occurences (which I will write of later) we went to Good Neighbour only to find his Kents body wasn't wanted. While I do of course see why no one wants to bury him, my offer to do it myself was received with a blank expression. In the end, I decided to bury him near the sea coast, for the depressing reason that there was soil there that would actually be diggable.

And so died Kent Connolly, a man I hardly knew but who this Diary now knows a little.

The other event I feel needs mention is Detective Valentine.

Valentine is a detective and after going to see him I discovered he wasn't there. His secretary, a lovely, if griefy woman whose name I forget (note hers as one to recall) explained the situation to me and I agreed to help. She seemed resigned to her loss, a feeling I try my hardest in my own life to avoid. So I wanted to help, not just for my own sake, but for the secretary's.

We went and found ourselves at Boston Common.

After infiltrating a vault built next to a subway, an idea I'm not even going to bother making fun of, we found Valentine. And I was amazed. He is a Synth.

He would later tell me he was a Synth of the past. He couldn't remember his creation at all. His appearance does not bring terror or fear, rather curiosity and perhaps detachment from him. His face is nominally there and it moves like anyones would. But he has where his cheeks should be a clear gap and within it one can see his 'parts'.

It was grotesque of me to find him so fascinating and I held my tongue off mentioning it at first. Indeed we spoke more about Shaun than anything else. Valentine as a person seems fair and decent to me. He makes no charge for his investigations and seems to live as I do, through a mixture of scavenging and trading. I wonder if he even needs food or anything to sustain him, but that would be rude to ask, in my view.

I did not think that his motivations for helping were some kind of program or routine. It just comes across as doing the good thing for the noblest reason: Its own sake. Good for the sake of good. I remember, if I put aside anything I've ever learned about Synths or even the Commonwealth and just access my mind before the war, I had one ethereal idea of how a machine could be in some sense human.

I thought it was a matter of complexity. The human brain, as I learned, is an extremely complex, layered and deep organ. So assuming that complexity leads to variety, does it play a part in human thought? Is part of the reason we cannot just create music but also listen and enjoy it due to how our brain is 'creating' that feeling on its own, with only seemingly superfluous input in the sounds of the music? Thus it led, for me, is it complexity that equals intelligence and if so, do machines simply need to be unendingly adaptive and complex and, as it were, their 'personality' will develop organically?

Now, that's a very ill-informed and almost certainly incorrect assumption, and I recall that I thought of it this way because of the way the brain understands colour. When it looks at most colours, it isn't 'real'. It's not even a combination of the wavelengths. It is what the brain assumes is a combination of those wavelengths. It creates what we actually see largely on its own. Hence Pink and Orange and so on.

Now all of that might be nonsense and I'd be willing to be told from someone who knew more that yes, it is nonsense. But it shows how I think about this and even now, my view hasn't been significantly changed. I've always held the view that in very basic ways, the mind is run by very basic 'rules'. It needs to regulate breathing, tell the heart to pump blood, that sort of thing. But beyond those, everything else is a product of randomness and genetics and outside sources.

Similar to how a society that is sufficiently advanced in resources can start to produce arts and recreation. This fact might partly explain why Piper is the only Journalist around.

This is why I can't hate Synths, or make myself do so. It's why I didn't feel distrust when Valentine very kindly offered to help me find my son.

Because even if he is manufactured or built in some sense, is he not just as complex and interesting as me or Piper? This is what I believe and I'm willing to stand by it.

One cannot endow sentience and an understanding of the self in contrast to others and then condemn the sentient being. It's just plain vapid and deliberately conceited.

I may one day take on Nicks offer to travel with me. I would learn a lot from him and I would ask him many a question about what it is like to be a Synth.

But not right now. We are heading back north, to clear out a hospital. Piper surprised me by saying she would go without any prompting. I assumed she might want to stick around home for a while.

But she insisted on coming along, commenting that she likes it when I pick locks.


	4. Entry 4

Piper and I are now a couple, the first time in this new life I've been so important.

I feel ive said far too little about Piper. This is partly because I have other things to say, and I have things needing to be done. But I will, as it were, give you an idea of our trekking.

Piper generally will follow me rather than the other way around. I decided, last night, as we slept (Aboard the wreck of the USS Riptide, a vessel I was once actually on-board) to ask her a few things.

She follows me because she likes where I look and that, unlike others, I am apparently fearless in the face of trouble. I still find it strange. I mean, she is the one who's been here, no? But she then said "You had to walk around and see things you didn't understand before you met me, I figured you were more used to it".

True, perhaps. But I spent that time cold, often hungry and with more than a few injuries. Pipers helps goes beyond just physical dragging of objects, something she asks if I'm ok with.

I mentioned at the start that I liked her mind. Well, I will give a brief reason for this, and why I think we need a press of sorts.

Piper is very naturally curious, and will, when we aren't on the move, investigate and make observations. When we were in that hospital with the nightmare inducing body in the MRI, she observed that the place was so wrecked. Its disorganisation was overwhelming even by wasteland standards. She had the power, in other words, of observing the decrepitude of the place, and its mess, if not as acutely as I did. But she at least has the excuse of growing up in this catacombed and spliced world. I was there that very day and even saw one of the bombs go off. So I cant expect her to empathise quite as strongly.

I do think another reason for her lack of presence here, I'll add, is because I don't speak to her very often. There is, I concede, shyness, but I think it is overall not knowing what to say. I will sometimes ask her questions about Diamond City and about Synths. She also will interview people and sometimes stops and talks to me about what is on her mind.

Journalism could play an honourable part of getting us out of this slump. If enough press and enough people generally come to read and write about the horrors of the wastes, the disease, the bags filled with human organs, the constant threat of death, the strange creatures hostile to anything and anyone that comes across them, things may progress, albeit slowly. It's a short reason, but a good enough one for me.

On Synths, I had a small issue. In the latest edition of Publick, Piper writes of the pre war years: "…before the mutants, the ghouls and the Synths…"

This rubbed me the wrong way, but I haven't yet asked her about it. I consider it a shame, but it proves that even seemingly enlightened people, including the only journalist in possibly the whole region, can have prejudices. It's that little gurning motion the mind makes when it encounters something it's been conditioned to find unpleasant. She is not wholly lost to it: She does display an interest in Synths and seems curious about them enough to not openly condemn them, something I haven't seen in just about anyone else I've spoken to so far. And she said nothing, nor implied anything, untoward about Nick Valentine.

But this little slight in her article is meant to convey a deeper meaning. Either she said because she believes it, that Synths are a product and a part of the current misery of the wastes, which is at best disagreeable (though in the objective way, I suppose they are a 'product' of the wastes), or she said it because she thought the public would agree, which is even worse. But this isn't a gamebreaker for me, and I am aware that I speak from a position of ignorance. I only say this criticism to address to myself what I find distasteful about this world I'm in. On this topic, I don't get the impression Piper knows a terrible deal more than I do about Synths.

I think my fear of the romantic aspect being added is thus: It means one can't think totally clearly all the time. But this is a cop-out, I understand. When I think of my wife, I feel pain, but it comes across as a life unstarted. It feels, in my mind, how I imagine bad fiction is when someone starts a story with a female death. And tragic as it feels, the fact I started this journey from her death is so pointless and banal it sometimes even bores me. She died with nothing behind it. No thought or care. They just shot her. I struggle to think of it now. But, and this will seem ghastly should anyone find this book from my corpse, I find myself...not 'getting over' her, but adapting to being without her. But I feel astonishing guilt over that thought.

I took the ring off my finger and I kept it. I think it's more for shaun that anything. I feel a lapse into guilt in my bad moods, and feel very ill at ease sometimes, late at night. I tell Piper none of this, but soon she will ask. She is far more adept at deducing things than I am.

On the idea of love in the wasteland, I have little to say. It is, I suppose, easier, in certain ways. Division of labour, as the communists said, is the way to progress. And as someone who fought a war against them, I must admit to them having a point, but only in the small scale.

If I think of it pragmatically, it makes sense. I might be dead soon, or Piper may die soon. I think, what most people don't realise about a relationship is that they do, in a way, want to be missed. We like the idea, do we not, of being mourned? It means to have lived to some purpose. Well, if I have my way, and it has to be one of us, I am certain it will be me. I can't be sure, but I would feel wrong to have survived her, should the worst happen.

But I could circle this drain all day. People are and will be naturally selfish. If there's anything this relationship can bring in this time, it will be to make us each a little less selfish. And that counts for something. Piper is already a very healthy degree of selfless. It is hard to live in the long term, much as I try, because everything, from what we speak about to what we do, is short term.

Love in the short term, one may say, seems meaningless. Why bother if it could end anytime soon?

The plain answer is that it will end anyway. The fact its five years or five minutes away means nothing before it happens. I am safe and alive now. One does not expect it to happen. Whatever kills us, it will 'be'. Nothing more or less.

All this and being with Piper makes me unusually happy.


	5. Entry 5

To the south. Besides the reason of wishing to explore how safe/dangerous it was, I also wanted to give it a practice run as I wish to eventually visit the so called "Capital Wasteland" there someday.

Piper agreed to the plan and after ensuring we were equipped correctly, we set off.

I gave her my automatic rifle, complete with .45 ACP rounds. I kept my hunting rifle with scope, hardened receiver and more ammo than I would probably need. Arms reach is helpful enough. But I prefer bullets reach. Then again, a bullets reach can go from millimetres to miles in milliseconds. Anyway...

We only encountered two places, which is not very many considering the distance we covered.

The first was Andrew station, a raider ridden wreck with two floors and more than enough gun fodder. Slipping past them failed. I have to wonder, do the raiders regularly get attacked? Though they don't seem to be supremely defensive they do clearly fortify buildings to a degree, sandbags, crates of ammo, sometimes a watchman etc. I think that, while this is likely a factor, its more probable that drugs like Psycho adversely affect their minds and breed fear and paranoia. I tried it once and only once.

Jet does seem to affect their fighting skills as it has a slow down affect on the brain, which is probably just jigging up the nervous system as fast as it can. (One man I met a while ago mentioned in passing to not get caught by raiders, as they may force you to take jet and then engage in torture, which is so menacing it would put Chairman Chang to shame).

Drugs do, in the short term, seem to help, but outside of the occasionally need for a drink, I have found the benefits middling at best, with the exception of Mentats, which I will write of another time.

Piper is mostly drugless and relies on Nuka Cola to progress through the day. Not healthy but then, it is healthy for the wastes.

I wouldn't miss the chance to interview a raider if I could and Piper agrees that much could likely be learned. However it should be said they likely don't live very long. I have yet to see a single grey hair on one of them and whenever they have any leadership, they are usually not much older than a subordinate.

A life such as theirs must be some kind of awful. Sometimes when sneaking around them one of them might mutter a wish to leave or make life better elsewhere. But there seems to be some unspoken kinship. You don't get to 'leave'. Well, actually, I am wrong there. As a raider you can leave your crew quite happily; when you die. I am thankful that they are, by definition, unsustainable as a group. Their only true victory is existence: As long as the insurgent troublemaker survives, he is in some sense 'winning', whereas a society positively needs much more than mere survival if it is to last. But the Raider does not even rise to the level of 'Insurgent', who atleast has some cause.

Pushing past the station, we pawed our way through the fog and deadish grass and saw something terrifying ahead: A Deathclaw.

Though we did not engage the Deathclaw, I was, with the advantage of darkness, soft shoes and keeping a fair distance, able to observe it somewhat.

The Deathclaw really is some kind of satanic mirror. The horns it has are curved and clearly sharp at their ends. Add in their terrific teeth and height of about 8 or 9 feet (while hunched) and they really do look like what a jealous God designing them would make to terrify us. Theres proof for the god theory after all, I hear someone say.

Judging by how close we got, it is of poor sight in the dark and if the pipboy was to be believed, it was its ears that were more sensitive. Now, I have actually fought one before, very early on and it was strangely unsure of how to attack. Not the dumb, automaton creature one might see, they do seem intelligent to a degree and the one we saw shambling would turn around frequently. They seem to favour one path and stick to it, even with no obvious advantages gained. I wonder if they are meant to live in packs? It would explain, inversely, why solitary ones are rare to find as I can just barely recall seeing one before this.

While there are no doubt weapons around that could probably deal them damage, I doubt any one person could ever hope to kill one. Avoidance is best. If it wasn't for the night, we would have been seen and killed easily like paper being sliced cleanly on a tray.

What it was in the way of was University point. After the bleedingly overt heartbeats spent passing the Deathclaw, we had to walk along a narrow pier. We came to a building built over the sea and a large hill upon which there was very clearly barricades with buildings flanking it either side. The route was then utterly ruled out by the presence of one Synth there.

I know I have written previously in defence of Synths but it this case there seems to be what Valentine called the 'inbetween' synths, which are built to resemble humans but live only to fight. I don't feel good fighting them, not least because they are obscenely difficult to take on and can easily out match a human in terms of weaponry. Some even detonate upon death. But inevitably, one needs to defend oneself. Coincidentally, Valentine offered to travel with me before I headed off but declined. I want to find my son of course, but I suspect Institute involvement, so I ventured here with Piper partly to test their limits, or at least that's the excuse my mind conjured in the face of annoyingly unexplored parts of the map.

Engaging in combat with a synth is a bad idea for more than one reason. As Piper and I, on our encumbered toes, crept into the university building opposite the hill, we came across one. I saw it as soon as it peered in view as I climbed up a ladder positioned near the third floor. I was utterly gobsmacked. Piper and I had scouted the room below, close enough that any noise could rise a third floor occupant, as there was no floors inbetween around the entrance. If it were a person, we would have heard breathing, or maybe just some sort of creaking.

And yet nothing. Not even a step. They really are like tableaus, immovable and, until you happen to see them, invisible too.

The extent to which they didn't make a sound was really shocking. And later on when we were forced to fight more than one, spared only by the outside element of Mirelurks, I noticed, amid the confusion, that their feet hardly made a sound either. I was baffled as to how. While the synths obviously contort and move themselves using digital signals, they need some kind of hydraulics to move. And noise must be made. It must be. Everything emits noise, and humans at least have the excuse of a circulatory system that can mimic a corpse in emergencies, via the amended fight, flight or 'freeze' argument. And yet those synths, aside from automated speech, make next to no noise in any way when they move.

And by their nature, they should make a little sound. But none at all. Now perhaps I simply made an error but I still keep it in mind because of one fact that had me nearly falling into the sea.

After all was done with, Piper and I left and went back the way we came, sneaking as we did, aware of the sentry ahead of us that could theoretically see us. It wasn't until we had made it to the pier that we saw something so head spinning I could barely stay on my feet. The whole time we had snuck away, there was a solitary synth not near us but above us the whole time, on the roof. It had a plain view of the whole route we had just taken. How it didn't see us, I will never know. But it made my mouth dry with fright and I was barely able to make the trek back after that.

After a certain point, fear, becomes insurmountable, even to the basic needs the body demands of the mind.

Piper made me stop more than once, to sit and recover. My feet were shaking. She was very nice about it and gave me a nuka cola. We spoke for a while, about things we were thinking about returning to diamond city. She spoke about writers she liked, among whom were Poe, Lovecraft, Keats and of course Shakespeare. How rare a woman Piper is. How rare a person.

I remarked that in my time, usually among the older generation, Massachusetts and Rhode Island were sometimes called 'Lovecraft Country' after the region the man wrote about the most.

As I said I suddenly became wordless again and realised that it was true. This was Lovecraft Country, and we had just had an unenviable taste of it. In-between the Deathclaw, the cold inhumanity the synths exhibited and at the end the one on the roof, I had touched the terror Lovecraft would try to bring about in his work. Not the terrific fight and triumph over the monster, nor the destruction of civilisation in graphic detail. No. Just half-glimpses and horrifying insights. The entire picture is never seen, you never see the beast clearly. But its there. Lurking. And I was grateful that we never had to see the end result upfront.


	6. Entry 6

Civilisation is the common garden weed of humanity. No matter how thoroughly it is stamped on, it always slowly creeps through the soil once more. People make a nest and have a bed, or a sleeping equivalent. They will tend to gather and group and we seem to thrive the more we communicate and talk to each other. Sure, societies have stagnated and sat still, or succumbed to suicidal tendencies and fallen apart. All of them are in some way corrupt and pretentious and, by definition, are self-serving. And yet they appear, continually, across the human tapestry.

That a primitive, warlike, superstitious species like ourselves, saddled with a proneness towards racism, xenophobia and groupthink, with certain specimens often lustful for power, should reach the point of even contemplating the atom or the microbe is astonishing.

But with this drops the other shoe, that being the fallibility we posses when given great power, such as that which nuclear weapons bring. In my mind, nuclear war is horrific, genocidal and maniacal but, faced with the facts of humanity, not quite as astonishing. It's not as if it hadn't crossed our minds.

Whoever wrote the book of revelations, with talk of an ocean of blood up to the knees of horses, not only wouldn't have conceived of the nuclear bomb, but couldn't have. The moment Hiroshima was turned into a crater of human remains (but was rebuilt, thankfully) we immediately tried to come to terms with this technology and the shadow that Revelations cast over the whole affair (in the minds of Christians, perhaps. All religions seem to have some kind of end of days, except Judaism).

The end result is this, the tinkering with copper, assembly of not so good crops and the cold and dank awkwardness of the shack building, the giving out of weapons to people you wouldn't trust with a bottle opener. Disease. Rashes and marks on skin not quite explainable. The weird sensation in the stomach, the heart whose rhythm never seems right. The innocuous becomes a potential terror. We have much in our way.

Every civilisation, every village to every city, must start somewhere.

I guess for Sanctuary, with its strange and bereft, slightly purgatorial characters, it starts here.

I was taken aback by the responsibility placed upon me. I mean, why me? But I did live in a time where the reverse of what exists now was the norm, with the possible exception of disease. So I can see the point. Of course i could have said it's my right to refuse. Some right it would have meant. Even if one isn't primed to believe it, the wastes force you to use what powers and privilege you do possess to help others, as disturbingly Christian as that sounds.

I put it off for far too long, I must confess. I just didn't believe it was my job. But then, whose job is it? I'm able-bodied, I understand how a shack stands up, I can take apart a weapon and put it together again and I have a limited understanding of the rhythms of nature. Completing this brief biography is my army service, from which I learned the basics of defence, the use of weapons, position and the importance of security, squad formation and group tactics.

I do not wish to seem arrogant. I am trying to be aware of what advantages my past life has afforded me. If I can apply it here, I must. Piper has been nigh essential. One informal title shes earned is "Lady of the Crop". Her reaction?

"I prefer Journalist."

The hardest part was getting the water purifier to work. Who knew, who knew, the difficulty in getting hold of ceramics. This alone delayed me stupidly for several days and after a lot of rummaging around old places, I had enough to get one wire to join another. A quick test drink performed by myself and the work was done.

It was easy to see waters importance to the venture. Once that was done, everything else by comparison was absurdly easy. The shack had been built weeks ago, not my best effort but it did its job. I did try, with my limited resources, to make sure each person had a minimum of three walls to themselves but I had to make compromises, due to lack of materials. Yes, a bed and chair and a box to oneself is needed, but privacy, it's something we should cling to. As long as I'm in sanctuary people may suffer for some reason or other, but what they won't suffer for is what they think and how they express it, unless they are a fascist.

Food and crops were not plentiful, but a lax enough rationing system cleared up the immediate trouble of malnutrition. Divying it up was simple and I gave away practically all my own food minus a cup of noodles that I gave to Piper.

Finally, defence. Building a turret was not hard, as I had made a point of examining one closely the first time I came across it. Piper is hopeless with electronics but does possess understanding of machinery and was able to help me build outer body of the gun and keep the wires from coming loose. Its fuel output is also efficient. One gun can run for many years with very few check ups and the only thing that needs regular checks are its hydraulics. Piper even supplied ink when needed, to help me keep notes as things got more and more complex. In the end though she decided to take them herself, to free my hands.

A few posts and the careful giving of rifles to two citizens who seemed at least to know how to load the damn things.

This experience has given me two thoughts. Firstly, that it makes one think a little like a communist. The comparison is inevitable. What I was doing was spreading everything equally, refusing to 'lead' or run the settlement, and talking reluctant citizens in to small time farming. I dislike communism and its absurd claims to always being close to utopia. But if it is to be taken in separate chunks of detail, it does I suppose give some credence to being thrifty. But it doesn't cure poverty, it just makes it bearable. And given the number of lives, for and against it, that were lost and thrown away over communism, it doesn't amount to much.

The second was the need for armour and weapons. It is appalling that in this era of famine and war, we should have entire citizen-areas free of firearms. Most citizens seem almost moronic when faced with them. How they survived in that church so long i don't know. But churches do seem to have the value of persisting against encroachment while so many other fads perish with time.

I doubt ill be here for long. I have the itch to travel but I will check up on them. Sanctuary will hopefully be renamed, and with something behind it, if only to offset the callous vinegar-piss taste I get when I hear someone say 'Commonwealth'. Despite difficulties, food and water seem to be getting produced and poverty is there but in less abundance than before. Will need to attract traders and such types in the near future.

To think, at one point, we contemplated Mars. The Stars. We had photographs of all the planets. We knew things once thought impossible. We had, as it were, touched gods face.

And here we lay, weeping at the sky, once more under gods unsmiling heel as we were before the industrial revolution.


	7. Entry 7

Somehow in this age, the world sprawls, endlessly undiscovered.

I will go into the apparent value of caps, as they are worth studying.

A cap is a bottle cap, manufactured by the makers of Nuka Cola. Its value seems meaningless in truth, it has neither Gold nor water to give it value and as far as I can tell it obeys no market. It also, strangely, has no subsets I.E dollars and cents, or pounds and pennies. If you have an item worth a cap and a half, it is not merely expected but assumed that you will sell it for two caps.

It also seems to have no manufacturing base. I know of no place where caps are made and they all seem to have been made before the war. Its value is in its relative abundance and the fact that no one person could feasibly create a counterfeit, or need to.

Every cap is smooth on its top and underneath a line of 'teeth' which attach to the bottle while the insignia for Nuka Cola is on the inside. Each one is identical and any differences are purely dirt or grime. Even rotted, grimed-up caps will be taken, unless they are rusted to the point of cracking or breaking.

Caps are durable enough, can withstand weathering and except for the worst winds, will not blow away or be impossible to find. The noise they make when being moved is one disadvantage.

The economies of scale behind caps are somewhat rag-tag.

Generally, for cheaper ammunition types, a cap equals a bullet. For more damaging impactful rounds like the .45 acp, the price jumps to 4 caps per bullet. A 50 Caliber will push sometimes up to 8 caps each. Ammunition is a good way to delineate cap value and overall, it is an early warning of how generous and confident the seller is feeling. I've taken to asking for ammo first before anything else.

Other objects are harder to quantify.

A rifle with no modifications will generally be somewhere in the 100 to 200 caps range, while a rifle with long range capabilities can jump another hundred caps. Weapons are far too varied to cover here, but generally, while weapon type and damage, range etc. plays a role in value, the greatest signifier seems to be uniqueness.

A Fragmentation Grenade will cost 88 caps to 125 caps and is generally assumed to be a costly purchase. Molotov's less so. Mines of any type will drop to about 50 caps at most, probably because those who buy them are seldom travellers and probably stay in one place.

Clothing is somewhat cheaper and yet most people will stick to the ones they own. Even Piper insists on keeping the same overcoat. People who travel alot will generally only ever take off their boots and their coat. This includes Piper and I, but we will undress and wash whenever the chance presents itself. Generally, even clothing that lends itself to long haul movement and combat will rarely exceed 100 caps at most. The abundance of clothing in the Commonwealth is about the only essential to human life that is abundant.

Armor is generally expensive, but it depends on its capabilities. Armor that is heavy and tough is a more midrange 200 or 300 caps. Specialised armors that are shadowed or have some sort of innate advantage generally go higher and very specialised armors can go for extortionate prices.

Junk items vary a lot but rarely go above 20 caps and they only get expensive at shipment levels.

I could go on, but this gets across pricing. Generally, I have taken to using weapons I find to reduce my own prices. That and .38 ammo, as I never use it and yet mutants and raiders will use it sometimes, probably as a simplified system to transfer. All the ammo in the world is no good if the weapon it can be used with is lost or broken. The dearth of pipe weapons serves to help few people. It is the weapon of a poor individual, I find. Then again, if the enemy insists on using them, I suppose I am at a permanent advantage.

As for the individual, things get more complicated, and it ties itself to class.

A poor person in a town like goodneighbor will live essentially capless, scavenging just enough to survive but never enough to sell, or make any money. Chiefly this is due to them never having weapons beyond crude blunts objects. Most people in the wastes with something worth stealing have a gun. So right away a prime resource of potential cap increases is gone. As a result, prostitution is high (but not illegal and not all who take part are doing so from poverty) crime is too and if they suspect you have no weapons or are easily duped, they will sometimes work up the nerve to attack, but this is a rare occurrence and almost never happens in Diamond, say.

These people will tend to live off irradiated or second hand food, or any crops they can find and it is appaling to see them neglected in the street. Conditions aside, it just doesn't make sense. I have noticed, in my founding Sanctuary, that even the people who now show up with no clear job to do will find something to do. One man, named Gene, reads stories at night, a help given the general illiteracy of the people. Another, whose name has left me, occupies his time by checking up on every single moving or powered object. He does it in a circle.

There is no real 'middle class' in the Commonwealth, because there is no person powerful enough to dictate to them from an upper class position. All outgoing groups that are not Brotherhood are generally socialistic or communist in nature, while being unaware of the existence of either of these things. It is a necessity, as there is no real economy beyond trading. No industry or manufacturing exists. Things from the old world are just traded back and forth until they break. An inherently unsustainable set of affairs.

If you have the gift of talk, you can do very well. Half of any one person's caps are made from their ability to haggle and sell high. It's a skill you must learn yourself if you want to be treated with some fairness.

Before Piper joined me on the road, I was able to scrimp and save enough to keep myself fed and watered and I long ago mastered the art of preparing food and eating on very little resources or cutlery, and how to start a fire etc. But medical supplies, nigh essential for long haul scavenge trips, were always chronically low. Stimpacks chiefly, but also radaway. Radaways at one point where so inaccessible to me I fell very ill and could barely stay awake.

Thanks to Piper and the enlarging of my carry bag and a more discriminate approach to what I carry and what I leave, I now have, at any one time, a thousand caps to fall back on. This covers only my own funds, except in weapons, where I buy for both myself and Piper. Piper relies on scavenging too, but makes her walking-around money from her newspaper Publick Ocurrences.

The people who are wielding the kind of cash that can be called 'rich' are generally drug dealers, frequently approached weapons salespeople, the heads of gangs, cautious and careful raiders and so on. Some groups, such as Super Mutants, seem to have no use for caps at all.

The 'middle' class, then, would be a vendor or trader, or someone who pushes and pulls the things being traded. Mercenaries don't exist all that much, but gangs like the gunners are sometimes employed in this way.

I did have almost 3000 caps at one point, (I've had more, such as when I bought my home in Diamond) but I sank most of it into a weapons and junk stall for Sanctuary.

All together Piper and I must do somewhat reasonably, not just in caps but in how we eat and live. We eat well enough and we share recipes on everything from Mole Rat to Dog to Deathclaw meat. She herself can cook, but prefers my cooking somehow. She can make most of the things I can, particularly anything with Mirelurk in it. We seldom have moments where neither of us can make something and our common skills means we often take turns, unless one of us is injured.

We have so far been able to sustain ourselves mostly on food we find. Radstags and such are numerous enough but it never has stopped feeling wrong to kill one, even if it will be eaten.

But we are trying to see how we would manage living off what we buy alone. It turns out we could, but not as much as we do now. It is more nourishing and probably healthier to eat something that's not been dead long. I always deliberately overcook the food, to make absolutely sure theres no lurking worm or some horror waiting to turn our organs into liquid shit.

Piper has been a help here in more ways than one. She knows the ins and outs of any bartering and will hold her ground until she gets what she wants. She has sometimes lost out on a meal to feed her sister, but says that days like that are diminishing into the distance. (Ill personally be damned if she goes hungry while with me.) She knows much more than me about growing food and we are considering making a small farm on the roof of my home in Diamond to be more self-sufficient. She was invaluable in getting food in Sanctuary to grow, and without her we would never have gotten the Mutfruit to come out of the ground. A key crop, as it can feed several people and is very transmutable.

Piper and I agree that the less we depend on caps the better, and that as a currency system it will last a long time but will eventually be subsumed. It simply isn't complex enough to accommodate the value and worth not just of everyday things, but of manufactured items in the future. Food can grow and water is purifiable. This alone gives us a huge advantage. Even if we had no caps, we would be doing better off than some raiders as a duo than we ever would have separately.

On another note, im finally started to get to know Nat a little better. She is a determined and somewhat bossy child of about 10 or so years. Standing at about 3 or 4 feet tall, she uses a box to keep herself at eye level with the citizens of Diamond when she peddles their only chance at reading anything current.

She was unsure about me at first but she is slowly beginning to warm to me, I feel.

It's hard not to feel pride at her stoicism in the face of the uninterested citizen. She tells me she hates nothing more than the people who don't even feign interest in buying the paper. She also dislikes newcomers and though she doesn't say it verbally, one can tell by her face how delighted she is whenever Piper is around and how loathsome she finds any visitors when she is not working.

She has a somewhat possessive personality. She is flanked by books on all sides of her bed, and with their house as it is, she is known to read well into the wee hours, and her sleep cycle is an annoyance and small worry to Piper.

Oddly enough, Piper did ask me advice about Nat, and how to approach her, especially now that she is beginning to become more mature in mind. She was also probably worried because of her increased time on the road with me. I replied that showing love and affection in itself is not a negative. Piper worries a good deal about her Sister and, in the way she worries, it is like that of a Mother. But when they interact they are clearly sisters. They share interests in prose and can talk for hours at a time about the Diamond cities denizens, sparing no details. One can tell that these two have been together since the latters birth. They talk not just in English, but in a clear, knowing language that only sisters can know.

It is in these long talks that I feel the most out of place. I feel as if I'm not part of the scenery. I'm not able to contribute very much in terms of real knowledge, as, despite being a citizen, I still don't know quite enough about Diamond City. I do, occasionally, contribute if a certain locale Piper and I have visited comes up and weirdly, Piper is never more interested in my past life than when Nat is around. Possibly she is trying to engage Nat into a history interest.

Overall Nat and I still need to get used to each other. She does at least acknowledge me when I visit now, she occasionally asks me a question if Piper turns up a blank, and her inquisitiveness is second to none. She displays a very healthy attitude about the written word and was more than a little curious about my diary. And, sometimes, I can make her laugh.

Children seem to be expected in settlements to be quite insular and in their own company. I know as a child that I was this way. But it will not last. Nat is determined at some point to step outside and wander the wastes. As a recently estranged Father, my first instinct is to protect her and keep her in safety. But when I think of it the way an adult would, I actually very much agree with Nat.

It is her small part in my idea of a real wandering of the wastes. A look in its eye. But still, she is too young to do it unsupervised. And I plan to mention to Piper a possible chance to train Nat in how to use a firearm at the very least.

I will finish this entry by noting down my own hope in the future to be a part of the life of the Wrights. It is too early to say, perhaps. But once I find Shaun, I want him to grow up with a friend.

I am aware of the amount of assumptions I'm making, so perhaps this is as far as I should push things. One needs a future to think of, even if it is idealised to an inaccurate degree.

This entry is quite long, I notice. We are in the Starlight Drive-in. I plan to develop this area too. It won't be easy, but I convinced Garvey that, nice though his moral support is, a truer need of this new settlement is steel and wood, primarily. I already have the other more obscure items to hand.

My garden weed will sprout here too, through the concrete.


End file.
